Friday, 6 February 2015

A few days ago you turned 18 months and you are all of a sudden a true toddler, not a baby anymore. Although you have recently started calling yourself baby when you are upset, or want a cuddle...baaaybeeee you say with a sad face as my heart explodes into a million pieces.

You have gone from being so independent and never wanting much to do with us to wanting to be a part of everything we do. You give hugs and kisses, many and often to friends and family and usually by your own initiative.You hug the animals and your stuffed animals, you hug books and sometimes random objects like spoons or a crayon. Everybody gets a little piece of your love. I am so proud of how sweet and caring you have become. Except for with Batman the cat, that cat takes some abuse, we are working on that.

You are a professional dishwasher at this point, you drag the chair from the dining room over to the sink where you stand for hours with the water slowly dripping from the tap, we are not allowed to turn the water off or move you from the chair. You still love being outside, doing anything it doesn't matter as long as we are outside. We go for walks in the forest around the house and point out the tallest trees or listen to airplanes. You know how to walk in moss and snow and we collect pinecones and perfect throwing sticks for the dogs.

Your speech amazes me, how fast you catch on and repeat things we say. A steady trail of Swedish and English words mixed in with baby babble and lots of hand movements to go with it. You’ve started putting two words together in the past couple of weeks...mamma up...buh bye mommy...no Tiko….you say thank you and please, yellow and blue, puppy, baby, hi...titta dar (look there) pankaka (pancake) grampa and mormor (grandma) all done...you say let it go when you want to watch Frozen and ei ei o when you want to play your barn game on my phone and you can count to three in both languages. All in the cutest, tiniest voice that I simply can’t get enough of.

I love you more and more and would not trade this time with you for anything. You amaze me and teach me so much about patience and being in the moment and being silly and that breaking out in dance at any time is important and necessary.